But the witch of Endor[56] certainly was a reality; she did "bring up" real departed spirits; perhaps only on that one occasion, and then only by direct divine and not satanic power and will, and for a divine object. She herself seems to have been surprised[57] at the real success of divinations which formerly may have been, in her hands, only deceptions. My native heathen chiefs have good precedent for their witchcraft executions. New England history cannot wipe out the fact of the Salem witchcraft trials. Demoniac possessions in supposed lunatics are possible; they were actual and numerous in Palestine during the ministry of Christ. Satan was "loosed" with unusual power, that the Son of God in his contest with him could give to the world convincing proof of his divine origin and authority, even the devils being subject to him. If demoniacal possessions are possible during a term of years, they are equally possible for a few hours; they never were nor are made by Satan for a good purpose. God, in the days of Christ, for the special purpose of the time, overruled them for the defence of his kingdom; since then, in the hearts of evil men, their advent is only for evil and by evil. If in Christian lands the enchantments of the hoodoo are only jugglery and nothing else, it may be that Satan's power is limited under the broad light of Christianity. But in heathen lands, where for ages Satan's power has not only been accepted but also sought, I am disposed to believe that some apparent cases of lunacy are real possessions by Satan, in which cases both the physical disease and its associated mental aberration are the effect of the possession. In lunacy pure and simple the mental aberration is the effect of disease alone,--some mental or physical injury. The possibility of a permanent possession by Satan being admitted, it is easily possible that the fetich doctors or priestesses may be temporarily entered into by satanic power, and that some wonderful things they do and say while endowed with that power are used by the devil to blind men's minds against the truth. It may be, therefore, that the missionary in his contest with heathenism has literally to fight with the devil, with principalities and powers in high places, and needs weapons more subtle than Martin Luther's inkstand. If so, he puts his preaching and his work at a disadvantage in deriding the witchcraft side of fetichism, revealed in black art, as simply "folly," and reprehensible only as a superstition. It is more than that; it is wickedness,--spiritual wickedness in high places. While it is true that it has much that is mere jugglery and charlatanism, it is quite possible that it may have something that is diabolically real.